We recently found Sea of Troubles, in a new paperback reprint. It's one of Donna Leon's Venice mysteries that has been, mysteriously, unavailable for far too long, and I devoured it in a couple of nights. There are two others that seem to be missing, and I'm hoping they're next in line to return. If you love a good police procedural, captivating protagonists, great food, and exiting locations, Leon's series of books with Commissario Guido Brunetti will be right up your alley. I have never been to Venice, but from these books I feel I know it, in its contemporary form at least. It's clear from these novels that Italy has its share of the woes and tribulations of modern life, but the beauty of this ancient city also manages to shine through. Many of the mysteries have to do with environmental problems, and political corruption, as well as immigration problems. All things we are familiar with and think of as our own national difficulties. But, after I finished with Sea of Troubles, I was right back into my lack of enthusiasm for anything I pick up to read. I have things on hold with the library system, but lack of funding has forced them to seriously cut back on the number of copies they order, and it can take weeks and weeks to get a popular book. 
Saturday could bring the biggest public demonstration yet about the Gulf oil gusher, when Hands Across the Sand gathers people on beaches around the world at noon to hold hands in support of coastal economies, oceans, marine wildlife, and fishing industries.Organized by surfer and Florida restaurant owner Dave Rauschkolb, the dispersed event looks to be aiming for a surfer zen vibe, as opposed to the angry demonstrations against BP that have arisen in New Orleans and elsewhere. (The precedent, fellow young folks, is the 1986 Hands Across America chain.)
On this day in 1718, the French Canadian Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville discovered the city that would come to be called Crescent City, the Big Easy, and the City That Care Forgot. But he called it La Nouvelle Orléans, New Orleans, named for Philippe d'Orléans, the Regent of France.
New Orleans is famous as the birthplace of jazz, and for producing many great musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Fats Domino, Mahalia Jackson, Harry Connick Jr., and Wynton Marsalis.
But New Orleans also has a rich literary history. It is sometimes called "the least American city" because it has such a distinctive feel, and for years writers have struggled to put New Orleans into words. David Simon, the writer and creator of the new HBO series set in New Orleans, "Treme," described how impossible it was to explain the city to an outsider. He said that he and his co-writer, Eric Overmyer, "imagined the pitch meeting, and we imagined trying to explain New Orleans and being unable to. If I could explain it to you sitting here now, I wouldn't have to do the show. That's the problem: you literally have to drag whatever executive you've got to New Orleans, throw him into a second line, get him drunk, take him here, take him there. It would have to be a lost week: you're not in America anymore — you're in New Orleans! We couldn't imagine being able to do that."
John Kennedy Toole was a New Orleans writer, born in 1937. Most people don't recognize his name, but the title of his only novel is famous: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980). He grew up an only child, with a domineering mother who was convinced that her son was a genius and controlled his life. Although his father worked as a car salesman and mechanic, they lived in a nice part of town and his mother had illusions of grandeur — she was from an old New Orleans family, her great-grandfather a hero in the Battle of New Orleans.
Truman Capote (books by this author) was born in New Orleans in 1924. His mother was 16 years old, a beauty queen, and his father was a nonpracticing lawyer, and his parents lived together in a hotel and soon sent the boy to Alabama to be raised by aunts and cousins. But he spent part of every summer in New Orleans while he was growing up. He dropped out of school as a teenager, went to New York, and made it his adopted home. He went back to New Orleans briefly to start his first book, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). And he wrote about it in his essay "New Orleans," which begins:
"In the courtyard there was an angel of black stone, and its angel head rose above giant elephant leaves; the stark glass angel eyes, bright as the bleached blue of sailor eyes, stared upward. One observed the angel from an intricate green balcony — mine, this balcony, for I lived beyond in three old white rooms, rooms with elaborate wedding-cake ceilings, wide sliding doors, tall French windows. On warm evenings, with these windows open, conversation was pleasant there, tuneful, for wind rustled the interior like fan-breeze made by ancient ladies. And on such warm evenings this town is quiet. Only voices: family talk weaving on an ivy-curtained porch; a barefoot woman humming as she rocks a sidewalk chair, lulling to sleep a baby she nurses quite publicly; the complaining foreign tongue of an irritated lady who, sitting on her balcony, plucks a fryer, the loosened feathers floating from her hands, slipping into air, sliding lazily downward."
Anne Rice (books by this author) was born in New Orleans in 1941, and sets her popular novels there — she is particularly famous as the author The Vampire Chronicles, beginning with Interview with the Vampire (1976).
The playwright Tennessee Williams, born in Mississippi in 1911, made New Orleans his adopted home, and had such a profound effect on the community that the annual literary festival is known as the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche says, "Don't you just love those long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn't just an hour — but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands — and who knows what to do with it?"
I won't be able to do much in the garden, at least of the bending, stooping, lifting sort (and what other sort is there?) for a while soon, as the next milestone on my life journey is coming up in two weeks. I've been procrastinating about an eye doctor visit much too long, but very aware how blurry my vision was becoming. I thought I just needed new glasses. But no, I need new eyes. And so, I'm having cataract surgery, both eyes, one eye at a time, the first one on the thirtieth of this month. Everyone tells me I'll be so happy once it's over, that it's like a miracle, and other exuberant forms of propaganda, but I'm fairly freaked out about it nonetheless. Blog readers who have already been through this - I'd love to hear your experiences. One of my sisters has had one eye done, and she is in the "it's like a miracle" camp, and she doesn't suffer medical procedures lightly. I dreamed last night that I found an old pair of glasses in some stuff I was going through, and they were perfect, I could see absolutely clearly and was so happy because it meant I wouldn't need to have the cataracts removed. Perhaps the glasses stand for the lenses I'll have IN my eyes once it's all over, or perhaps it's just about how nervous I am. (Cross-posted to Women On)
So, today it finally happens - the hummingbird feeders go up. Or at least a couple of them. I'll wait until I see some hummers actually on the first feeders before I put all of them up. The black-chins are first, and have already been observed in the area. It's still so cold at night and in the mornings that if they're here they really need the supplemental nutrition of feeders in order to survive. The plants that offer up their usual source of nectar are not yet blooming, or certainly not here in my yard; so really for these early birds the feeders people hang will be the only source of energy for a while. And boy, do these little guys need energy. This site is really your best source of information for all things hummingbird. I find I refer to it constantly throughout the summer as questions occur to me. Just took this photo of my feeder and my darling redbud tree.
